


Astronomy In Reverse

by lachances



Category: Stand By Me (1986), The Body - Stephen King
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Existential Angst, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Friendship/Love, Homophobic Language, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-11-28 10:36:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11416146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachances/pseuds/lachances
Summary: Whirlwind, fall of '63.





	Astronomy In Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> a continuation to "bright out", set in 1963. (this wasn't meant to be 8k words. i'm sorry.)
> 
> title from sleeping at last's "venus".

_[Until your legs give up.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwQ_p14tPIM) _

 

 

It was nearing my seventeenth birthday when I told Chris for the first time that I loved him.

It was no longer an implication, an unspoken understanding lingering in the air during the progression of our lives. It stopped being consoling shoulder squeezes in the early hours of the morning or lazy laughter disrupting the silence of this quiet town.

It was the presence of a ghost that after haunting an old house for years had finally been noticed.

The only difference being that it was real, and it scared me more than any ghost ever could.

 

*

It started a Thursday, with a rumor.

A badly kept secret had made its way around school that at lastsomegirl had fooled around with Chris. ' _Don’t kiss and tell_ ' was one of the many common courtesies that people forgot existed when it came to him.

Nevertheless, if it came to parents it was an entire different tale. Chris wasn’t the kind of guy rich girls who lived up in the View took home to their parents to discuss college plans over rotisserie chicken and fudge cake with, and he knew it. Everyone did.

Mr. Chambers had always made sure to remind him that he’d end up with a  _'good-for-nothing whore of a wife'_ ' to keep him company as he rotted his days away in some rundown paper-thin shack in this town, and that if he even thought he had the slightest shot in the dark of getting anything more out of life that he was off his rocker. Chris was more than well aware of the type of guys those girls would take home. They’d take the guys on the football team who swooped them off their feet and sweet-talked their way into undressing them three nights later in the back seats of their '57 Pontiacs, or asked the smartest guy in our college courses on a study date by request of their mothers. Just not Chris.

That being said,it's human nature to want what you can’t have, or at least I thought I had experienced the full extent of what that felt like. 

In their eyes, he was a special charm added to their bracelets, a sadistic social game to which he never agreed on being the prize, a ticket to the latest motion picture of an inaccurate definition of rebellion, a shot of excitement in their sheltered lives and a billion other analogies that never stopped turning in my head. In Chris’s words he was a  _guilty pleasure_ , as he told me so I envisioned a box full of rum balls, sticky sweet delicacy that’ll rot your teeth and give you a stomach ache if you eat too many in one sitting.

I always saw him more as an acquired taste.

I didn't ask Chris if the rumor was just that, a rumor. I didn't have to _._

Somewhere buried way back in a crevice of my mind, or maybe deep in the hollow of my gut, I knew it to be true.

With nothing to say as we met up in the school hallways, he just smiled at me the way he unfailingly did, sunny and languid, slinging his arm around my shoulders. 

 

*

In the early evening he showed up at my house - to be specific, my bedroom window. I figured today he wanted to avoid my father's unnerving gaze and my mother's uncomfortable small talk. It was six-something when I heard a noise hit the glass. A grin tugged at the ends of my mouth. The third time I heard the sound I got up from my bed, walked over to the window and unlocked it, as I pushed it upwards I was met with my best friend halfway up the big-leaf maple tree that sat in front of my window.

 _“Fuck, Gordie, you take any longer and soon I'd be dying of old age out here_.” 

I scoffed, rolling my eyes so hard I was sure they'd get stuck in the back of my head. Reaching my hand out to him, he took a hold of it as he balanced the rest of his body by holding onto the window frame, pulling himself into the room.

“ _So, what brings you 'round these parts, Chambers?”_  I teased, sitting down on the chair in front of my desk and folding my arms.

Chris had already made himself comfortable on my bed, spread out like a starfish catching rays on the shore.

“ _Wanted to ask you if you wanna come down to the treehouse with me, been a while_.”  

“ _Can't, gotta finish up this paper for history class, and mom will be pissed if I skip dinner again. You know I'll never hear the end of it.”_ It was the truth, as much as I would've liked to be anywhere else at the moment, I couldn't afford to not hand in this assignment, or have my mother asking passive-aggressive questions about my whereabouts again. A wave of disappointment washed over Chris's features. “ _Have you finished your essay yet?”_  I asked briskly,trying not to sound overbearing or accusatory, as I fished around in the drawers of my desk for a working pen.

“ _Almost.”_  Chris retorted, sitting upright and running his fingers through his hair. “ _Say, when do you think you'll be done with that?”_

“ _Don't think it'll take me too long, I'm halfway finished.”_ I turned to look at him, offering a soft smile

“ _Alright,_   _I'll just— hey, what if I come back later, yeah? Then will you come with me?”_ His face lit up with curiosity, a sliver of hope dancing in his eyes.

I felt my small smile beginning to widen.

_"Sure."_

 

*

Three hours later I found myself in the vacant lot in front of the aged treehouse with Chris to my side, the trapdoor was wide open. I reached for the ladder that had been tossed aside and steadied it, Chris climbed his way up inside first, I followed shortly after.

“ _This old thing’s gonna fall apart any one of these days._ ” He whispered, and he wasn’t wrong. It sure seemed that way with how the floor creaked beneath our body weight and the wood around the small windows was dead, leaving jagged ends all over, splinters just waiting to happen.

“ _Better not fall apart with us in it_.” I joked in a nervous voice; starting to entertain the thought of the serious damage we’d walk out of that with.

Chris smiled tiredly, shrugging his shoulders. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, his eyebrows rising on his face, “ _Ain’t that high of a fall_ ,” he paused, looking out one of the windows, “...  _and broken bones heal anyways._ ” he went on in between a yawn.

Something that while I knew, didn’t actually change anything, despite the beatings I’d gotten over the years from Ace and his posse  _—_  and Chris from Eyeball and his dad  _—_  I’d never quite get used to the gut wrenching sensation of hearing  _—_  or feeling  _—_  the first slam of a body against the ground.

We hadn’t been in that treehouse in months, and the last time we had been up in it, we hung around for less than a minute before we split. We weren’t as close as we were to Teddy and Vern as we used to be in our junior high days by a long shot, and similar to how one goes about distancing themselves from an old friend, we started visiting it less and less. I knew I would always have some sort of attachment to it, if it happened to fall apart tomorrow, it’d take the last bit of childhood I was holding onto down with it. The foundation.

I had built it with Denny one summer roughly around ten years ago  _—_  really, it was my father who ended up doing most of the work  _—_   we had carved our names in a corner, you couldn't notice them unless you leaned in very closely. Not long after, Denny picked up other interests and outgrew the treehouse, leaving it to be mine alone. Surely enough, Chris’s, Teddy’s and Vern’s names wound up messily carved in as well.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t seem to remember much of what my life was before Chris became a part of it.

Everything that was in the treehouse felt smaller, particularly our wooden chest filled with trinkets, junk and an abundance of cobwebs. Dusty boxes piled on top of each other slumped in against another corner. The old radio we had was cracked beyond use and the girlie magazines we had hidden underneath the chest in our secret compartment were gone, probably stolen by some group of younger boys. I scoffed.  _History has a way of repeating itself._

“ _Well_ ," I closed the chest and ran my finger over the top, accidentally managing to push some dirt underneath my nail. I leaned on it to support myself as I turned my entire body back to face Chris. " _it seems our old magazi-_ “

“ _I only kissed her, Gordie. We just… made out a little._ ”

_Oh._

He didn't need to clarify what he was referring to, the matter had been gnawing at every corner of me far too long to not know, but in that instant I wished I had no clue what he meant. His tone of voice made him sound like a little kid pleading guilty to stealing the last cookie in the cookie jar, remorse oozing from every syllable.

It made me remember when he opened up to me as we watched guard on  _that_  trip, flashbacks to how he cried. I felt compelled to tell him that he shouldn't give me explanations, that I didn't need to know.

Because I didn't.

But instead I slouched up against the wall; I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms tightly around them.

Silence overtook us, although it couldn't have been much more than a minute or two, it felt like an eternity.

“ _And— well, she let me feel her up, too._ ” It was then when I lifted my head and my eyes met his. I saw something in them for a fraction of a second which in an uncanny, near exact way, mirrored how I felt, but as it disappeared, a phantom of a smile grazed his face instead.

At that I laughed weakly, genuinely. “ _Wow, Chris, you're really great at breaking the ice._ ” I strained my words 'til they were practically drowning in sarcasm. It didn't exactly work though, because Chris usually  _was_  good at easing tension filled situations, and I had made him aware of this fact in the past. ' _Bluff_ ' might as well been written all over my forehead in big, bold letters.

“ _Don’t worry, Gordo, wasn’t much of an experience to get jealous over._ ” He smiled some more, smugly this time. If this was any other night, I would've told him to fuck off and whacked the smart-ass out of him with a half-hearted punch in the shoulder.

Tonight I just averted my gaze, my laugh turning into a faltering smile, annoyed and embarrassed I had been that easy to read, but not surprised.

“ _I thought— y’know, the teasing would die down and everyone would shut their mouths and find something else to waste their time on ‘sides calling us fags. Shit—_ ” He threw his head back, wry laughter falling from his mouth. “ _Richie will still rank on me and when my old man stops beating up on me for daring to exist that’ll be the day..._ ”

A couple of months in of knowing Chris, I realized his dad was  _always_  on a  _'mean streak'_ , drowning himself in  _what-could-have been's_  and the bottle, leaving his wife and children to suffer the repercussions.

After years, it fucked with his head when his father  _was_  nice to him.

I felt impotent any time he showed up with a new set of fresh bruises, I could only begin to fathom how he must've felt.

“ _... But,_ " He slowly pulled his lighter and a wrinkled pack of cigarettes out of his right pocket, swiftly flipping the top up and removing one. " _nobody's gonna tease you anymore, Gordie._ " He rolled the nicotine stick between his index finger and thumb before placing it between his lips, his lighter sparked and the light the flame gave off illuminated his face in the somber night. “ _I promise._ ”

I was torn between thanking him and telling him that he shouldn't have to fight my battles for me, then running away. 

Running out of Castle Rock as far as I could until my heart felt like it was pumping gasoline and my body was operating on nothing but toxic fumes.

I hastily got up on my knees and before my mind could tell me to unhinge the trapdoor and leave; I was already on the other end of the small, wooden house. I plopped down directly in front of him, our legs touching.

We sat there, neither of us moving at all other than Chris puffing his cancer stick, soaking in the quietness for a moment.

After a while he withdrew his cigarette from his lips and placed it between mine instead, I took a couple long drags then handed it back to him, only to see him stub it out with the sole of his scuffed up All-Stars. I exhaled and watched as the crisp, October wind blew the smoke away.

“ _I cherish these moments.”_ I uttered in the best Teddy voice I could muster, wrinkling my brows and looking at Chris with a pseudo-intense look. I felt nostalgia bubbling in my gut, letting myself reminisce for a moment about the scattered remains left of our friendship with Teddy and Vern.

Chris let out a gleeful chuckle, pulling me out of my short trance; he brought his fist down against his knee and drew his face closer to mine. “ _Truly remarkable imitation, you deserve an academy award_.”

Whenever it was just the two of us, his voice became softer.

I wasn't sure if he knew it did, and it had never occurred to me to ask or tell him. Whether he was laughing himself to near death or whispering nothings underneath his breath, whenever it was just him and I, it was almost always softhearted.

I swallowed down whatever internalized anguish had been growing in me over the past sixteen years of my life. Studying his features in the moonlight, blue-green eyes were the ocean that it reflected against. I knew every crease in his face, every split in his chapped lips.

I raised my left hand up to touch him, moving a strand of fallen blond hair over his ear; his eyes were watching me intently, he had a look on his face that I can only describe as concentrated,  _careful._ The same face he pulled when he was analyzing his cards in a game of blackjack, doubling-down,knowingit was up to chance.

I'd be lying if I said what happened next was faultless or that I had the most minimum idea of what I was doing.

But it had been roughly instinctual, a senseless desire with a drive, and for the first time in a long time I decided to give in to it.

I pushed Chris gently until I heard his back hit against the wall, it took him about three seconds to register where I was heading and almost immediately his hands reached out to my face and pulled me forward onto him, letting my lips fall on his in a simple, close-mouthed kiss.

The first time Christopher Chambers kissed me I was fourteen and unsteady in every sense of the word  _—_ while many things had changed in two years, my instability and his lips had not.

I broke us apart, lifting myself up and moving forward to sit on his lap, my legs folding down to the respective sides. Leaning in, I reconnected our lips once again, this time in a much more open, much more relaxed kiss, with all the desperation and each word gone unspoken being declared in the form of touch. I let my hands wander over his body, feeling with my fingertips up his arms and settling on his shoulders.

Chris's own hands explored the shape of my figure as well, one of them slipping beneath the thin cloth of my t-shirt, resting on my midriff  _—_ gentle, butdamnfrigid and clammy  _—_  while the other traced the form of my spine, the icy wind hitting against my back, making me tremor.

I took one of my hands off of his shoulders and reached in to cup his face, curling my fingers underneath his jaw. I kissed him all I could, slow and deliberate, our movements were a mosaic of grazing teeth and steady tongues; low, breathy deep-chested sighs falling from my mouth bounced against the walls surrounding us. I felt hot all over, a pool of warmth that had been born somewhere in my stomach had spread throughout, coursing like a river in my blood, drumming at a steady pace against my ribcage.

He dug his fingers into the skin of my waist, as if I were going to float off, carried away by the wind just like the cigarette smoke and dry leaves around us if he didn't hold on tightly enough.

Then, his body moved against me, shifting his hips up to meet mine, managing to draw out a noise from himself. Momentarily, he froze; our eyes meeting again, his were looking just as  _—_  if not more  _—_ petrified as mine most likely looked. Brow furrowed and slack-jawed, I could hear him trying to catch his breath. Although Chris and I had kissed  _—_   _made out_   _—_  an amount of times before, it had never escalated. We joked around about how we'd end up losing it in the least romantic way possible, by breaking in some chick in a sketchy bedroom that reeked of cheap cologne and the faint smell of stale vomit at one of the ridiculous parties that were hosted on weekends whenever the opportunity presented itself.

_'Gee, if you ever scored with a girl, it'd be 'cause she was blitzed enough to not think twice about getting in bed with you, Lachance.'_

Both of us knew better than to actually take such statements seriously, but we definitely didn't think that experience would end up being here instead, in this lot, in this treehouse, with each other.

I was scared. Not entirely of the act itself, more of what it represented, it was a turning point which we couldn't come back from. I'd spent so long thinking about it, so many lost hours of sleep mixed in with a handful of wet dreams. I knew I wanted this, and frankly, it sounded a hell of a lot better than a mindless fuck in a bed which I had no clue of who it belonged to, with someone I’d met hours ago, an awful inauguration into the world of sexual activity that didn't just involve you and your own hand, one that you'd end up bragging about next Monday morning at school and dramatizing at boring holiday parties years down the road after one too many drinks.

I was scared, not enough to subside my emotions, just enough to make me feed into them a little more, a borderline masochistic kick you get from your own fear; heart pumping, knee-buckling self-destructiveness.

Eyes still fixed on his; I nodded, bringing my hands up to frame his face, which was all the confirmation he needed.

He clutched onto my hips, pushing my body down to lay against the hard floor, we fell into one another, legs entangling and fingernails skimming down taut skin, feeling over the ridges of his shoulder blades and ribs. Hands started to sink down lower between our bodies, lithe fingers taunting, rubbing circles into my skin, running up and down my sides.

“ _You okay?”_  I felt the words murmured somewhere into my chest.

“ _Yeah._ ” I wanted to laugh, I think I might've, because he was rubbing me through my pants, and ' _your hand is on my dick’ was_  the first response that came to mind, the one I almost just blurted out.

I fumbled with his zipper; growing impatient, riding the form of his leg, high on the feeling of rough friction, the once subtle ache in my groin steadily increasing as I was already straining in my jeans.

He stopped me, holding my hips down with one hand and unzipping my fly as well with the other. I lifted myself off the floor to pull my pants down, just enough to stop the strain on my dick, letting them pool around my thighs as I reached forwards to get Chris out of his.

Dipping his hand beyond the waistband of my briefs his fingers came in contact with my cock.

I was embarrassingly close to cumming then and there.

I reached past his underwear and my hand ghosted over his erection, he groaned when I closed my fist around him.

Our hands moved  _—_ mine shaking way too much to have gone unnoticed, but he didn't mention it — messily and frantically, they slid to no rhythm at all, no technique to follow –  _not that we had much to base ourselves on_ , and I'm not sure if we would've cared about one, anyway. It was most certainly not like the movies, the ones with the overdone clichés where they were more than sure, completely comfortable in their skin and not right about to start pissing themselves out of nervousness, the cat would always spit some sugary one-liner, knew where to put his hands, and then they'd cut to the lady's face scrunched up in bliss. Those movies, which would usually cause an uproar of exaggerated gagging noises and hollering in the theatre. Definitely wasn't like in that cheesy porno Randy Brandt had hawked from his perv cousin either; you’d think girls could orgasm before you even finished getting them out of their underwear.

It was a sticky hand-job in a treehouse that seemed too cramped despite there being only the two of us in it, slowing my body down, speeding my mind up, not giving me even the slightest opportunity to overthink it, I had a second of clarity, and nothing else mattered. For the duration of that transient feeling I wouldn't let myself care about anything else.

Every sense of mine felt like it had been amplified, I could feel sweat trickling down my nape, gooseflesh popping up all over my arms and Chris's warm breath on my neck, his hair brushing up against my cheek, his lips hovering over my collarbone, the air around us smelled like him, like  _Halo_ , tobacco and damp skin.

His palm was warm,  _wet,_ slick with pre-cum slipping from my tip and sweat from the friction, pulling me off in an easing motion, trying to coax out from me sounds that had leaped to my throat, his hand was clenched tight, tighter than I clenched my own when I touched him.

I shoved down the pressure building up in the pit of my stomach, I wasn't going to last.

It felt so good it near hurt. He hoisted up my left leg, locking the underside of my knee onto his forearm, changing the angle, making me let go of him as I felt the drag of his cock against mine. It made me dizzy, as if I were balancing on a tight rope a thousand feet up in the sky, lightheaded from the thin air, a step away from crashing back down to earth.

The sudden fear of the possibility of this being tossed away and ignored after it was over sunk in. I needed to touch him more, take in the feeling of his bare skin against mine and memorize the expression he wore, face half glowing in the dim light. I could make out the outline of his nose and the shape of his lips,  _parted._ I jerked his body closer, getting my hands on him again, stealing the air between us in sharp breaths like it was gonna run out, licking kisses where his clavicle dipped and up into where his jaw met his neck, earning softer, little pre-climax noises as a response. I twisted my wrist and he came on my hand, dribbling down it, with a buck of his hips and his elbow more than jutting into my leg, shaky moans and chest rising and falling like sunrise and sunset. He stroked me harder, long strides up the shaft then adding pressure at the head, his forehead leaned against mine; the muscles in my legs spasmed as I arched up into his touch, overpowered by the emotion of yielding to him, the rush of submissive excitement which reminded me I wasn't in control over the pleasure I was experiencing, the feelings I felt, and just how _good_  that was. I came over my stomach, the ardor drifted through, leaving me as briskly as it had arrived, settling beneath my skin. 

 

_Back down to earth, it was._

 

Chris sat up and took the flannel he'd been wearing off, leaving him in a black undershirt. He cleaned himself up with the inside of it, and then tossed it to me. 

I snorted before wiping myself down with it as well, then bunching it up as I zipped up my fly. “ _I'll give this back later. Clean._ ” 

Too sleepy to disagree he just nodded my way, a soft " _Thanks._ " leaving his mouth. He kissed me, again, following it up with a quick “ _G'night, Gordie._ ” 

I smiled, a little. _“Yeah. See ya.”_ Gently swinging open the trapdoor I started climbing down the ladder, stopping midway.

_“Chris?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“It's cold. Don't fall asleep in here.”_

I trembled the entire walk back home, I wasn't different, but I felt so. Using the last amount of energy I had in my body I climbed into my bedroom window, throwing Chris's flannel into my hamper and untying my shoes, not bothering to undress, I'd shower in the morning. I crawled into bed, rough denim hitting cotton sheets; dozing off to the night sound of wind rustling through maple leaves.

I was tired.

I was happy.

 

*

It was raining harder than what had been predicted, the downpour beat against my skin as I sat on the front step of my porch. The dirt beneath my feet had begun slushing into mud, staining my sneakers with an ugly mixture of brown I knew I would have to end up scrubbing out of the fabric later. I was soaked to the bone, raindrops dripping down every strand of hair, every limb.

_Fuck._

Dad and mom had left earlier for Washington. We had briefly discussed their trip to Olympia the night before, and how by the time I'd arrive home from school they'd be gone, they were to stay the night and be back by Saturday afternoon. My mother had neatly placed two tin foil trays of leftovers covered in saran wrap in the refrigerator for me to heat up, tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch. Even if none of us would ever say it out loud, all three of us were very aware of how my parents' relationship had fallen face-first in the gutter. There was never one sole crystal clear reason as to how or why it had happened. Instead it was the constant tension filled discussions that surged about by what seemed like very trivial issues, or inadvertently, the strain that Denny's death had put on both of them, and how they each dealt with it in very different ways that drove them further apart rather than bringing them closer. Or maybe, one could even argue, just the years of being married so long that had burned out the once ignited  _'flare of romance'_.

They never discussed it perhaps out of convenience. Why talk about something neither of them wanted to affront? At least there was familiarity and genuine concern for each other.

For a long time I thought my mother felt she owed it to God and some part of her consciousness to finish raising me and then, on my eighteenth birthday, she would finally kick her shoes off and let her hair down.

She was determined to set me up with someone, which resulted in me going on dates with the daughters of her friends. Usually timid, indecisive girls, most stood there in their pretty knee-high shift dresses with soft roller-curled hair — some, wishing they were elsewhere, as I often noted in the faraway looks in their eyes and their memorized conversation starters — others, quite enjoying the movie we were watching, or liking the park rides we went on, just wishing they were on the date with anyone other than me. It wasn't that I hated going on the dates, or disliked them even, they turned out alright. One of the girls — Julie — I had liked from the start, and when I dropped her off at her doorstep when the date had come to an end, she kissed me, for just a moment. When my mother asked me about the date later on, I conveniently swept that detail under the rug, merely stating that it went well, but that I wanted to take a break from dating for a while. I wasn't disgusted by the kiss - or even disappointed, at that. Which was largely the problem. She was a beautiful girl, charismatic and kind, and yet I couldn't possibly feel more indifferent when her mouth was pressed against mine. I couldn't feel anything. I ran my tongue over my lips 'til they were cracked and sore, trying to remember the taste of hers. Once, weeks after the ordeal, the situation popped back into my mind and I entertained the thought of the possibility of a parallel universe where she and I could've dated. I considered calling her or simply showing up at her door, taking her out, kissing her again, meeting her parents, going through the motions of high school dating.

Another unreasonable fear had slipped in through the back door, full of resentment and anxiety, I grew even more wary of the future, beginning to wonder if the rest of my life would be just as anticlimactic, if I'd age to be a 40-year-old with a marriage built on conformance, raising children who I prayed turned out to be nothing like me, tying bricks to my ankles and sinking deeper in the sea of utter irony I had been trying so long to escape.

I was wrapped in existential nihilism like it was a second skin. I contemplated writing about my nightmares, trying to recycle my cognitive dissonance and make it something literary, but at the time, I couldn’t. For more reasons than one. I had nightmares mostly surrounding my father, he screamed so loud the neighbors could feel it vibrating against their walls, hands swinging in the air, raging on and on about how Dennis would've never turned out to be a faggot. And that would be the final  _'Denny wouldn't'_  I'd ever hear, because once he was finished cursing me out and coming clean about how I had always been nothing but a disappointment, he'd kick me out, disown me for good. Then, the endings started to change, instead of throwing me out, while he was screaming at me so up close to my face I felt spit splatter across it, he'd fall over, hand clutching his chest. That was it. Three days later I'd attend a funeral. My mother would never look me in the eyes again.

Sometimes, though, the nightmares were about Chris's dad. Those were worse. Ones in which he beat Chris into the ground so hard his face was barely recognizable, in which the aftermath was raw, broken knuckles and blood stained floors.

The worst beating Chris had ever gotten happened over four years ago, due to his two week suspension for the milk money scandal. His old man landed him in the hospital overnight with a broken arm, a broken nose, a broken wrist and a sprained ankle, plus a free fat lip and purple eye for days to go. I felt my heart drop down to my stomach when I first heard the news; it was some kind of subset of fear that just couldn’t stay still. My hands had gone numb. It mangled my brains, toyed with my imagination and turned it into paranoia. A day and a half later I heard that he was okay, and I thanked whoever the hell was up there listening, that he was — although battered and bruised — alright.

Two nights after the incident, he ended up falling asleep in my bedroom as we studied, with his daytime clothes clinging to his frame and his shoes still well on his feet. His expression was peaceful, which clashed with the cuts and bruises that rested upon his cheeks. That was the first time I had the absurd curiosity to know for a split second what it'd feel like to kiss him.

I hardly slept at all that night.

As much as I hoped it would be, it wasn't a passing thought. It ate at me the entire rest of the week, getting through the first layer of shame, and then chewing its way through the one of odd guilt, easily managing to demolish every wall I had ever set up to keep those feelings out. Eventually, the thought had simmered, but then there were times where I caught Chris in a still moment, where it seemed that everything slowed down and he was the only thing in focus, natural body movement practically begging for a candid photograph, and every thought I ever had of kissing him came rushing back at full force like a tidal-wave, as stubborn as I.

 

The once heavy rainstorm had disappeared, rainclouds were starting to scatter and what had been left behind was a light drizzle. I looked down at my shoes; moving my feet around slightly and listening to the slimy mud squelch beneath. Deciding I had had enough, I stood up from where I was seated on my front porch and headed into the house, knowing the probabilities of catching a cold would be higher than ever if I sat out there in the chilly wind soaked any longer.

I walked from the entrance down the hall and into the kitchen, leaving a series of sticky sludge tracks behind me. Scrubbing my hands with the dish soap in the kitchen sink since there was no hand soap in sight, I quickly dried my palms off and threw the towel on the counter, swinging the refrigerator door open, rummaging through different grocery items in the hopes of finding a bottle of pop. Much to my disdain, we were out of that, too. I pulled the plastic wrap off of one of the trays with leftovers mom had saved me and picked at a cold piece of turkey.

Dropping a tomato slice in my mouth I half-skipped to the living room, turning the Television on to whatever — the evening news, re-runs of  _The Andy Griffith Show_  or clips from that Marilyn Monroe documentary that came out sometime in Spring, the day her death was announced I saw people mourning her in the streets, the town suddenly seemed bigger, it was an eerie feeling, hearing the tragedy announced on the radio and watching people hysterically clutching newspapers in hand, as well as the classic dipshits joking about how much her  _‘great tits would be missed’_ — I dragged a chair from the dining room to put my feet up on, lounging around on the couch in front of the TV set in my sopping clothes. It felt good, something so small and insignificant as walking through the house leaving muddy shoeprints all over the place felt strangely satisfactory. The kind of dumb content you feel in sixth grade when you find out the girl you’d been crushing on liked you back or in ninth when your folks finally let you throw that party that you’d been bitchin’ at them to let you have for months. Childish, incessant, and in a couple more years verging on pathetic, but goddamn did it feel good.

 

*

In the process of yanking my remaining shoe off my foot there was the familiar sound of a knock on glass, instantly my head snapped towards my window. Chris stood behind it, smiling an uneasy smile, seeming half sympathetic and half apologetic. I brushed my hands under the curtains and slid it open.

He hesitated before trying to go through it, lips pursing and eyes narrowing. “ _Your doors open..._ ”

All the lights in the house were turned off.

“ _Oh. Yeah. Parents aren't in. Washington._ ”

At the sound of that he slung the rest of his body through the window, sitting on the sill for a second before fully stepping into the bedroom.

He looked poorly, appearing as if he had just woken up from a rough nap that had done nothing to aid his tiredness, dark circles looming underneath his eyes, hair disheveled and mud also covering his jeans and the soles of his shoes.

“ _You look like shit._ ” I breathed out in a tone that almost could’ve been mistaken for hostile, but Chris got it, knowing this business of teasing as well as the back of his hands.

He frowned; stumbling back for a second, eyeing me up and down before small bouts of amiable laughter started leaving his mouth. He glanced at me with a devious look, clever smirk splitting across on his face. “ _Have you taken a look at yourself?”_  Walking over and taking me by the hand, he suddenly dragged me out of my room to the bathroom, turning on the light and motioning with his head to the mirror.

When I stepped in front of the reflective glass and saw what laid in it, it was hard to not give in laughing. Partially at my own reflection and partially because of Chris, his hair going in six different directions and face bright red from how much he was cackling, completely losing the last bit of composure he had after seeing my reaction. My hair was wet and slicked back by the rain water, no part, no nothing. It laid flat against my scalp, looking like I’d dumped half a can of grease on it, like some sorta hot shot gangster. My face was covered in specks of dry mud, almost resembling freckles, and my forehead had a big, smeared muddy thumb print on it

“ _I see you've decided to take inspiration from the great Ace Merrill for your new hair-do, Gordie._ ”

“ _Eat me._ ” I snickered, bending over to rest against the sink top, yucking it up with Chris, every time we looked in the mirror or at each other we started having another fit, pain began forming at my sides.

Between laughter he paused — teary-eyed and giggly — to breathe out “ _For breakfast._ ” as his response.

I'd forgotten I had been walking around with one shoe.

Cheery giggles dissolved into quiet chuckles, falling into the background of the setting; I finally pulled the other soppy Ked off, peeling my drenched sock off as well, quickly chucking it at Chris before he could dodge it and sneer.

Laughing, he caught it and threw it right back at me. “ _Got any idea what you're doing for your birthday yet?”_  He sniffled, lips perking up a little.

“ _Licking shitty frosting off of store bought cake and chain-smoking.”_

A visible crease in his brows formed, he licked his lips and placed a hand on my shoulder. In a sweet, phony tone coated in something akin to concern, he whispered; “ _Those things will kill you, you know?"_  not being able to hold back a smile.

I smirked, shrugging. “ _Guess I’ll die overweight with piles of shit for lungs then._ ”

" _Yeah, sure, Gordo._ ” The ends of his mouth quirked. “ _Smart-ass. Anything else happening on your birthday?”_

My eyes had fallen on my dresser, “ _I'm definitely getting the 'It's time to quit this writing nonsense, Gordon' speech again this year. Wouldn't miss it for the world._ ” trying to find shapes or a sense of courage in the Cypress wood where there weren't any.

“ _That's bullshit._ ” He murmured, bitterly, turning to face me expectantly, waiting for me to refute or concur, or  _something_. Then, softly: “ _You know it is. Your stories... they're gonna make it big time, Gordie. Your scripts— you could even move to California, I bet._ ”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “ _Yeah, maybe._ ”

We had conversations dealing with this issue many a time, and yet no matter how repetitive we both got, they all managed to feel different. I would tell him to quit gassing me up, but the truth was, it was nice to hear. I craved approval and encouragement. When I was younger I had done a poor job of disguising the fact that it was something I had been so desperately yearning for from my father, and getting it from anyone else felt like a pity compliment. But it was real when it came from Chris, he continued encouraging me beyond the years of negligence and the scab it left that I tried so terribly not to pick at, it meant more to me than I could've told him back then.

“ _Would you come with me?”_  I asked.

The monotone, almost robotic sound of the news reporter's voice coming from the Television I never bothered turning off downstairs had swept across the first floor and crept its way up the stairs, running through the floorboards and zigging chills up my spine; it suddenly sounded louder, turning into white noise, static drowning everything else out.

“ _What?”_  He mouthed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

 _I love you._  “ _Come with me to California_.”  _I can't remember how things were when I didn't._

He smiled, ghastly,  _awfully;_  “ _I'd have to, man. You probably wouldn't survive a week without me._ ” tearing through the seams of whatever he'd used to sew himself together, an old, crude stitching job done by young and unexperienced hands who had managed to carry the heavy weight of years of simply existing, years meant to be filled with innocence and a mind that had not yet become accustomed to worries and responsibilities that you quickly realized didn't fade in time, only accumulated.

My chest tightened. “ _Yeah, I guess- yeah._ ” I'd been rubbing raw at the skin on my wrist.

Chris. Who had always been better at throwing the punches and taking the hits, or at least better at making people believe he was. Seemingly gracefully and effortlessly, like he didn't bleed the same way the rest of us did. It got him in trouble often, his unbothered demeanor usually giving the wrong impression, which was that he had a self-righteous  _holier than thou_  attitude, and people no doubt thought it was rich coming from one of those  _'low-life Chambers kids'_ , they were ready to bust his chops at any chance they got. I knew — as much as perhaps it pained me to admit it to myself — that had I not known Chris, I would've thought the exact same thing, and I realized what he had once told me about how I was not hated, simply unknown, rang true in certain aspects for the both of us. And then again, I realized no one in this town would ever come close to knowing us, and I started forcing myself to be okay with that.

If you knew Chris, you'd know he was a good artist, drawing only as a hobby that was born out of boredom, never interested in pursuing a career as an illustrator. You'd know he stopped wetting the bed at age seven, that he had a pair of dimples that sat nicely on the small of his back, that he grinded his teeth when he was upset.

In a way I felt lucky, like I had the missing torn out pages from a book that was illegible without them, little pieces I'd collected over the years that had been stashed away in my sock drawer or beneath my mattress.

I pressed my palms against the floor, trying to steady myself as I got up, the room was spinning and my body felt heavy; my back was sore and the muscles in my thighs had been aching all morning and all afternoon. I held my hand out to Chris; he took ahold of it and lifted himself up by clutching the footboard of my bed.

Four months younger and an inch taller than him, I stood at 5'11" —  _or what I used to lie and say was 6'0"_  — while he came in at 5'10". We would constantly outgrow each other, usually every couple of months by an inch or two, but this most recent growth spurt would be my last. We'd try to make the most out of being taller when one of us surpassed the other, even if it was only for a few months. I thought surely Chris would grow to pass six feet, which later on he did, reaching 6'1". Finally the size of his father who had spent most of his years towering over him. Eyeball, who ended up being the shortest between his dad, Frank, and Chris himself was the same height I was, not falling on the short end by any means.

He stepped closer and without reasoning or hesitation pulled me into a hug, snaking his arms around my middle and pressing his cheek against mine.In the moment I drew the conclusion that that was it, I fully expected him to leave after, right through the window he came through, and for that to be the last time he ever put his arms around me.

“ _I love you._ ”

Before I could think twice the sentence had struck the air with a shock like a flash of lightning before the storm, though, less monumental, floating between tension deprived and begging to be heard.

On occasion I'd feel the words creeping up at the back of my throat, they'd slide up onto the tip of my tongue, about to slip out between the corners of my half smile and leave me to make do with whatever fate of mine awaited. Whenever this situation arose, I would force them back down with a chug or two of flat coke. Sometimes — more often than not — I'd wish I had a glass of hard liquor in my hands instead. Sitting down on my bathroom floor and purging intoxicated feelings of mine into a ceramic bowl in a drunken haze never seemed more appealing.

I could hear my heartbeat hammering against my eardrums. 

" _I felt like telling you after we got back from Harlow road, and after you kissed me two years ago at the swimming hole, and last week._ ” I rubbed his back, up, down, and then up again, fidgeting with the material of his shirt between my fingers, listening to his shallow breathing that curled around the shell of my ear and brought the same flood of warmth from last night back to my stomach. Except, this time, I was half-sure I was going to hurl.

I wanted to say more to him, I wanted to talk about getting out of here, going to California or New York or just out to fucking Portland, away from everything that ever made him doubt himself. I wanted to say that fame was a simple  _'what if'_ in an indefinite future that would slip right past you in the blink of an eye, a possible hitch of luck in a succession of luckless events, but that he was here, this was now.

I needed instant solutions to problems that seemed endless and to say something that didn't feel like it fell short, but everything did.

Chris hadn't pulled away yet and that was fine. Actually, I think if possible he would've inched closer. I would've held him for hours if he decided he didn't feel like moving at all.

He hummed, lowly, then spoke “ _I love you, too, Gordie._ " matter of factly; voice just above a whisper like all of a sudden he was alone and talking to the walls.

Stepping back to take a look at my face, crossing his arms, clouded misty eyes, “ _I was gonna tell you first but—_ "  _lopsided grin slipping onto his lips._  " _I guess I'm just a pussy, huh?"_

I stepped back too, staring at him dumbstruck before I could process his remark and laugh, relief trumping nervousness, the knot in my stomach coming undone and the feeling in my hands returning.Quietly answering, _“You and I both know it."_ I smiled keenly.

With a tilt of his head he took a deep breath in through his nose; scrunching it up as his eyes flickered from the ceiling to the floor, lips pressed together in a straight line.

I would've kissed him. Trust me when I tell you that I wanted to, the days when I felt like kissing him quickly outnumbered the ones where I didn't until soon there were none left. But somehow, it seemed like if I did I would ruin it.

 _Later_ , I thought,  _tomorrow._

It hit me sometime earlier that month that I didn't know myself very well. I'd dabbled in self-knowledge as much as one needed to be a writer, intermittently catching a glimpse of myself in the metaphorical mirror of consciousness I'd thrown a blanket over. I could tell you Chris filled in the blanks for me, completed the parts of myself I'd been too much of a coward to explore on my own, but that'd be a lie. I don't think he knew who he was either, we'd both been idly dancing in the dark with versions of ourselves we had yet to discover, ever changing entities I'd been dying to meet. It had never been about completing each other. I wondered about the people we'd be after Castle Rock, versions of who we were that had thrown the baggage out the window and reinvented themselves. I wanted to see him grow into the person he was meant to be without others holding him back. He'd complete himself.

He opened his mouth.

“ _Skin it._ ” Came out, phrased like a question instead of a statement.

I reached over and ran the palm of my hand over his; familiar motion intermingled with a newfound sensation, electricity skidding across from his fingers as they curled their way into mine, a soothing movement came from my part, caressing the back of his hand with my thumb.

We stayed like that long enough to let me take in the memory, the earthy smell of wet soil that was saturated in our t-shirts and the throb of my head, a warning of a cold-induced migraine to come; sweaty fingers bumped against each other.

I felt a firm squeeze, and then he let go.

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been thinking about making this a four part story, time jumps every two years in... _different seasons_. i'm still not sure though. thank u so much for reading. i hope u enjoyed it.


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